1 The Cuckoo's Calling

ut pretty well—and you carried them out of Flat Two, leaving the door ajar
again, and climbed the stairs to your sister’s flat.
“You didn’t notice that you’d left a few little drops of water from the roses, by
the way. Wilson slipped on them, later.
“You got up to Lula’s flat, and you knocked. When she looked through the
peephole, what did she see? White roses. She’d been standing on her balcony,
with the windows wide open, watching and waiting for her long-lost brother to
come down the street, but somehow he seems to have got in without her seeing
him! In her excitement, she throws open the door—and you’re in.”
Bristow was completely still. Even his knee had stopped jiggling.
“And you killed her, just the same way you killed Charlie, just the same way
you later killed Rochelle: you pushed her, hard and fast—maybe you lifted her—
but she was caught by surprise, wasn’t she, just like the others?
“You were yelling at her for not giving you money, for depriving you, just as
you’ve always been deprived, haven’t you, John, of your portion of parental love.
“She yelled at you that you wouldn’t get a penny, even if you killed her. As
you fought, and you forced her across her sitting room towards that balcony and
the drop, she told you she had another brother, a real brother, and that he was on
his way, and that she’d made a will in his favor.
“ ‘It’s too late, I’ve already done it!’ she screamed. And you called her a lying
fucking bitch, and you threw her down into the street to her death.”
Bristow was barely breathing.
“I think you must have dropped the roses at her front door. You ran back out,
picked them up, sprinted down the stairs and back into Flat Two, where you
rammed them back into their vase. Fuck me, you were lucky. That vase got
smashed accidentally by a copper, and those roses were the one clue to show that
someone had been in that flat; you can’t have replaced them the way the florist
had arranged them, not when you knew you had minutes to get clear of that
building.
“The next bit took nerve. I doubt you expected anyone to raise the alarm
straight away, but Tansy Bestigui had been on the balcony below you. You heard
her screaming, and realized you had even less time to get out of there than you’d
been counting on. Wilson ran out to the street to check Lula, and then, waiting at
the door, staring through the peephole, you saw him run upstairs to the top floor.
“You reset the alarm, let yourself out of the flat and edge down the stairwell.
The Bestiguis are bellowing at each other in their own flat. You run downstairs—
heard by Freddie Bestigui, though he had other preoccupations at the time—the